But amid the flurry and sudden rush of trade protectionism,
Trump's goal in the end remains a mystery.

"The honest answer is that no one knows," Edward Alden, a
senior fellow at the Council on
Foreign Relations, told Business Insider when asked Trump's end
game. "There appear
to be real differences within the administration, and the
president has not made his positions clear."

Trade experts say the lack of a clear objective from Trump
risks extending current trade fights indefinitely and causing
major harm
to the US economy.

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Trump doesn't appear to have a goal in mind ...

Trump has so far only talked in vague terms about a goal of
"fair" and "reciprocal" trade. Experts told Business Insider that
no statement or action has so far given a definitive answer to
the question of what the president hope to achieve.

Trump has shunned these multilateral trade deals in
pursuit of bilateral trade deals, but even given this rough
goal there's no clear vision for what those deals would aim to
achieve. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin
offered little clarity when he was asked during a
congressional hearing on Thursday what the bilateral deals could
look like.

"There is no specific model for other agreements." Mnuchin
said.

This means countries are largely guessing at what exactly
they should offer the Trump administration, a process that is
likely to end in false starts and frustrating negotiations, said
Greg Valliere, chief global strategist at Horizon
Investments.

"I think Trump
doesn't have a clear end game - he wants concessions, he want
these countries to sue for peace but his understanding of trade
issues is so confused that he's not sure what he wantsand that, of course, makes him
even more difficult to deal with," Valliere told Business
Insider.

Simon Lester, the associate
director at the Cato Institute's Center for Trade Policy Studies,
said the proposed US-China deal is the perfect example of Trump
constantly moving the goalposts.

"When the US complains
about the trade deficit with China, I think China is genuinely
confused about what the US wants," Lester told Business Insider.
"One response by China was to offer to buy more of specific US
products. Given the US demands, I think this was a reasonable
response by China, but it doesn't seem to have satisfied the
Trump administration."

"There is no clear set of
'asks' the administration is waiting for China to promise to
meet, and there is no clear plan have to move China to address
them other than turning up the heat and waiting," added Scott
Kennedy, director of the Project on Chinese Business and
Political Economy at the Center for Strategic and International
Studies.

Even Republican lawmakers are
getting tired of the haphazard approach.

"To my knowledge, not a single
person is able to articulate where this is headed, nor what the
plans are, nor what the strategy is," GOP Sen. Bob Corker, a
longtime critic of Trump's tariffs,
told the Tennessean on Thursday. "It seems to be a wake up,
ready, fire, aim strategy."

... which could drag out the trade fight out and hurt the
US

Like a race with no finish line, experts said that Trump's
lack of a goal will result in a protracted trade war.

"I do not believe
this trade war will end anytime soon," Alden said. "It will have
to get much worse before there is a serious effort to reach
compromises."

caption

Farmer John Duffy and Roger Murphy load soybeans from a grain bin onto a truck. Soybeans could be hit hard by Trump's trade war with China.

source

Scott Olson/Getty Images

The longer the trade war drags
on, economists say, the more
damage the US will sustain. According to Oxford Economics,
Trump's current tariff threats on China would only shave 0.05%
off of US GDP growth in 2018, but that would grow to a slowdown
of roughly 0.25% in 2020.

Trump's vague messages could also lead other leaders to dig
in and worsen the US's trading relationships - rather than remake
them.

"I believe that's a huge
miscalculation; other countries have their own internal politics
and their leaders will not wish to be seen kowtowing to the
American president," Alden said.

Kennedy said Trump is taking a huge risk by possibly
undermining the international trading order - such as the World
Trade Organization - with no clear replacement.

" It's amazing that the
Trump administration has decided to risk an implosion of the
multilateral trading system without have a clear plan of how it
should be changed and what China needs to do to return stability
to the bilateral relationship," Kennedy said.